In industrial control, there is a class of distributed motion control applications that require both precision time synchronization and deterministic data delivery. Precision time synchronization at the nodes can be achieved with a network communication protocol according to IEEE 1588, Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems, 2002, and by using frequency-compensated clocks as disclosed in our prior U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/347,658 filed Jul. 22, 2003. Motion control applications also require deterministic data delivery, which means that input data will be received and output data will be transmitted at specific time points based on predetermined periodic intervals. This requires coordination of network bandwidth with resources at the intermediate and end nodes. One way to coordinate network bandwidth uses precise and detailed scheduling of both data production and network transmissions for data delivery. Another way uses a combination of coarse scheduling of data production and the use of frame priorities to prioritize network transmissions for data delivery according to IEEE 802.3, Part 3, Standard for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection Access Method and Physical Layer Specification, 2002.
In distributed control applications, it is desirable to have a daisy-chain network bus topology due to simplified wiring requirements. It is also desirable to provide a redundant data delivery path in case of a network failure. This bus topology can be accomplished through half duplex Ethernet, but this type of network has several drawbacks such as collisions, a 100-meter copper cable length limit and technology obsolescence. To avoid collisions in this type of network, fine scheduling and control of transmissions are necessary. Further, data throughput is limited to 100 Mbps by the half duplex nature of network. These limitations make it undesirable to use half duplex Ethernet for distributed motion control applications.
Full duplex Ethernet uses switching technology to avoid collision domains and doubles peak data throughput to 200 Mbps through concurrent transmission and reception. The use of switches in network topology results in a typical star configuration. The switches avoid collision by queuing Ethernet frames on a per port basis. In order to avoid propagating errors on received frames, most switches use store and forward architecture, in which the frames are queued even when there is no resource contention on a port. This results in a delay corresponding to frame size plus intrinsic queuing and switching delay.
It is also possible to connect switches in a daisy-chain topology with full duplex Ethernet. The maximum copper cable length limit is raised to (N+1)*100 meters for N switches. However, significant problems result for time synchronization and deterministic data delivery in a network with this topology. There are random time delays introduced by the switches that affect time synchronization resulting in loss of synchronization precision and stability. Under current technology with IEEE Standard 1588, a boundary clock can be used on every switch node to manage time synchronization between an upstream master clock and downstream slave clocks. Even with use of boundary clocks on switches, it is difficult to achieve sub-microsecond level precision synchronization required for distributed motion control, when more than four switches are cascaded.
As mentioned above, in order to avoid propagating errors on received frames, most switches use store and forward architecture, in which the frames are queued even when there is no resource contention on a port. With store and forward architecture, significant random cumulative delays are introduced in the data delivery path resulting in non-deterministic data delivery and other performance issues.
One object of the invention is to provide time synchronization of the daisy-chain connected network nodes. Another object of the invention is to provide deterministic data delivery. Another object of the invention is to provide a redundant data path in the event of a network failure.